Pierce Has Reasons To Avoid Lipton

CHARLES BRICKER Staff Writer

Unless she has a sudden change of mind, Mary Pierce will not play Lipton for the sixth year in a row.

She will be there _ in the stands. She loves to watch. But she doesn't love to play Lipton.

Why? You won't get the real answer from Pierce, whose public posture is that she is afraid to play close to where her father, Jim Pierce, lives (Delray Beach). They have been largely estranged since Jim Pierce was escorted off the French Open grounds in 1993 for screaming obscenities at his daughter's opponents.

It is a handy explanation, but not acceptable. If Mary fears a confrontation with her father, she would not be anywhere near Lipton and certainly not watching from the deck of the players' lounge.

If you talk to people who know her, they will tell you she hates playing in the wind, and Lipton has plenty of that.

That is not acceptable, either. If Pierce harbors any desire to be No. 1, and I don't think she cares one way or the other, how do you pass up the No. 2 tournament in the United States, with all those ranking points? How do you think of yourself as a top player and duck Lipton?

Pierce is 23 and has been working a year with Martina Navratilova's former coach, Craig Kardon. That she has been able to stick with one coach this long is encouraging. But there has been no real change in Pierce's game and she can't afford to tread water any longer. There are too many young talents poised to pass her _ Venus and Serena Williams, Anna Kournikova and Mirjana Lucic.

She has played Lipton twice. In 1991, she went out in the fourth round. In 1992, she lost in the third round.

Pierce is the only player in the top 31 who is not signed on to the Lipton. Even Conchita Martinez, another wind hater, who has played this tournament only once (1990, where she lost in the semis to Judith Wiesner), is in.

The Corel WTA Tour has talked to Pierce about playing Lipton, but they are not making it a high priority. Why should they? They have 30 of the top 31. The WTA is concentrating more on getting Pierce to play at Hilton Head and Amelia Island, the first two clay tournaments of the year, and they apparently have been successful in getting her to both of those.

One of these days they will get her to Key Biscayne.

Pacing himself

When Pete Sampras groused about the long season after pulling a calf muscle in the Davis Cup final vs. Sweden, it sounded like his emotions had taken over temporarily at a low point in his life. But two months later, Sampras is every bit as angry about the length of the 101/2-month ATP season, and he plans to do something about it.

Not only will he not play Davis Cup, which he announced last week, but he is going to be very selective about the number of tournaments he plays after the U.S. Open.

``There's really not a time to put the racket down and do something else. So I think in the years to come I'm going to make sure I'm going to have an offseason. Maybe not this year, but especially in years to come.''

Officially, the season ended for Sampras the first week of December. He spent the next month rehabilitating and as soon as he could work out he had to get ready for the Australian Open.

A 10-handicap

New Corel WTA Tour chief executive officer Bart McGuire spent the entire fortnight of the Australian Open in Melbourne, holding meeting after meeting and trying to put some cohesion in the women's tour.

McGuire, longtime WTA attorney, was rushed into the position after a WTA search committee recommended and offered the job to PGA executive Ric Clarson, who lasted exactly one day on the job. Clarson, in fact, never signed his contract.

They thought they had the right person for the job, but one of Clarson's first moves, even before putting ink to the contract, was to meet with the rebelling lower-echelon women's players who have been sued by the tour, and give them an ultimatum. Without consulting anyone.

Other tour officials, who thought they were on the way to a diplomatic settlement of the suit, were horrified that Clarson went in with his guns blazing. It didn't take long for both sides to figure out this was the wrong guy at the wrong time.